The World Health Organization (WHO) assured Monday that its mission to investigate the origins of the pandemic, expected this week in China, was not intended to find “a culprit”.
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“It’s about understanding the origins of the pandemic, not finding someone to blame,” WHO director of health emergencies Michael Ryan said.
“It is a question of finding the scientific answers to the face-to-face meeting between man and animal”, he added. “It is an absolute necessity”.
“These are the answers we seek, not the culprits or the accused,” he argued.
The long-awaited WHO investigators tasked with looking into the origin of the coronavirus will finally arrive in China this week, Beijing announced on Monday, a year after the first death was reported in that country.
The visit of these 10 WHO experts is ultra-sensitive for the Chinese regime, anxious to avoid any responsibility for the epidemic which has killed more than 1.9 million people worldwide, while it is practically eradicated in China.
In a statement, the Chinese Ministry of Health announced that the expert visit would start on Thursday, a week after the postponement of the trip scheduled for last Wednesday.
The boss of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, had very unusually let his annoyance with Beijing show through, saying he was “very disappointed” by this postponement.
The mission is made up of ten scientists (Denmark, United Kingdom, Netherlands, Australia, Russia, Vietnam, Germany, United States, Qatar and Japan) recognized in their different fields of expertise.
They should go to Wuhan, the first city in the world to be quarantined on January 23.